


High notes

by Itylien



Category: The Alienist (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Animal Abuse - Mentioned, Canonical Character Death - Mentioned, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:33:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28136985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itylien/pseuds/Itylien
Summary: Set between season 1 and 2. Speculation as to what could happen to Sara in the intermission, when she was starting her work as a private investigator.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	High notes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chelseagirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelseagirl/gifts).



> I hope this fic finds you happy, healthy and having good time!
> 
> Some warnings in the end notes but know this is a fully light-hearted affair.

It came as no surprise when, a week after admitting to Theodore what transpired with captain Connor, she found herself gently dismissed from both his service and the service of the police altogether. He did not blame her; he said. Trusted what she told him of having little choice in the matter. He would not dream of telling her how to live her life. He would also be complicit in none of her further recklessness. Beyond — it seemed — handing her a license to practice as a private detective in the state of New York.

It may have been a little contradictory, but if living in the world of men taught her anything, it was that they were contradictory creatures.

She left on a high note.

Connor has been a bully and while Doyle’s promotion was nothing to rejoice at, she noticed in him no tendency towards sadistic joy his predecessor took in belittling others. That itself raised morale of the police force significantly, and by extension, disposition of the men towards her personally. If nothing else, there was some amusement to be found in overhearing speculations about the reason behind her departure while she kept puttering around, putting her affairs at the office in order.

She will surely settle down now, they said. Maybe with John Moore, who was seen in commissioner Roosevelt’s office with suspicious frequency for a society illustrator. Illustrious coupling, if so. Or maybe the crazy European aristocrat caught her eye — you can never tell with them newfangled girls what appeals to them, and their miss Howard was as newfangled as they came.

Good-natured whispering followed her all the way out the door. And then it was done.

She already knew what was to come.

***

First few weeks after her dismissal passed in a haze of preparations. The saloon on 808 Broadway required extensive renovations if it was to serve her purpose as the place had little to no hygienic facilities and electric wiring, apparently put in place by previous owners in great haste, required complete overhaul to warrant the bare minimum of safety. Luckily any emerging issues of this nature were easy to manage with money and by the end of the year the saloon — now under the sign of Howard Detective Agency — was ready to receive both employees and clientele.

The process of finding employees has been made easy thanks in part to Sara’s good standing with the suffrage community. One letter to a friend more active in the movement sufficed for the infant agency to be positively inundated with expressions of interest from women from all walks of life eager for work. Most of the candidates tended, however, to rescind their interest when she stressed how dangerous her undertaking could, and likely will prove to be. Only a handful remained enthusiastic, and she just hired them all. Reasonable profit margins were, after all, not the aim of this enterprise.

As for the clients, Sara tried to manage expectations. Winter turned out to be dark and wet that year. Little snow has fallen, but even so the streets of New York quickly turned into a swamp of freezing mud and horse-manure that did not invite exploration. With her agency freshly opened and the advertisement she bought in the New York Times — fancifully illustrated as it was by a sketch of the renovated facade in John Moore’s practiced hand — only out for a couple of days few knew her services were even available.

And those who did were not necessarily supportive.

***

Police came calling on one of the last days Sara was in the saloon by herself. The evening dark but not yet late as Doyle waltzed in accompanied by two henchmen. All of them in uniform. Somehow that did not put her at ease. Her employment at the police commissioner's office may have ended amicably, and the force gave her no trouble since, but it stood to reason some may harbor suspicion as to the veracity of the conveniently heroic tale Theodore endeavored to sell to the public regarding their previous gang-leader’s demise. From what she could tell, the newly minted captain was in a better position than most to suspect foul play.

Doyle has stalked about the place for a moment, affecting polite interest with the decor while his men kept to the door. Mounting tension thickened the air and then the man began to talk in his shameless, heavy accent… Regarding the particular nature of the New York City’s criminal underbelly? Explaining in mock-deferential tone how neither her money, her pretty dresses nor her lovely face will be enough to protect her from it. He finished his tirade by suddenly bringing his baton onto a dainty malachite lamp Sara kept on the desk in what will serve for the reception area, making her flinch at the noise and instantly shattering the thing to pieces.

Later, as she was sweeping up the shards littering the floor, Sara concluded that in this extremely heavy-handed, vulgarly intimidating fashion, the new police captain was attempting to deliver a warning. Not to warn her off the work she hoped to accomplish — as she was certain his predecessor would have — but by providing an honest demonstration of the kind of treatment she should expect. Aiming to scare, yes, but settling on barely a startle he and his men left peacefully immediately after.

Definitely for the best too since, in the moment of indignation, provoked by the intrusion and destruction of her property, Sara was about to pull her gun on them. In hindsight, doing so may not have turned to her overall advantage considering the damage to her locale was minimal and nothing was demanded of her. With some good will, the entire visit could even be considered friendly. A sign of things to come.

***

Nonetheless, a positive outlook was hard to keep up in face of the longest, darkest months of the year, when there was nothing left to do but to wait. With the waiting itself made that much harder by recurring reminders of constantly passing time.

With just a couple days left in the year, the mother of Detective Sergeants Marcus and Lucius Isaacsons succumbed to her age. Sara would never have known had she not called the police department central with some inane matter, hoping mostly to distract herself just in time to be informed both brothers were on leave due to the very recent passing of their mother.

She has never met Mrs. Isaacson. Neither brother talked much of their private matters during occasional dinners Laszlo still insisted on hosting for all of them. Her heart went out in sympathy to the men she considered her good friends, but if she were left to her own devices, that would have been the end of the matter. Instead, one of the girls she hired — and has as yet not given any work to — looked up to her expectantly and asked if she could accompany her to the funeral.

Turned out; while in Sara's opinion funerals and grieving were private matters, Yiddish tradition disagreed somehow. As Bitsy’s put it — funerals were for the living.

***

They arrived at the Isaacsons' place — couple of rooms rented in a tenement house — after the poor, dead woman was already put in the ground and, again, Bitsy had to explain it was expected for the burial to take place as soon as possible. According to her, it was also expected for friends and neighbors of the bereaved to show support and Sara, as a friend, not only could but definitely ought to at least visit and offer kind words if she was not otherwise engaged.

It wasn’t really a good idea. Sara felt awkward. Her dress — while in no way ostentatious — stood out as much too lavish among the crowd of tenants dressed in practical browns of the working class. She knew no customary words to be spoken for this occasion even though they seemed to come naturally as breathing to the other mourners, and while Bitsy kept assuring her it was fine to just be present Sara still felt somewhat unmoored.

The awkwardness turned out to be well-worth suffering through however, as it allowed her to observe for herself the birth of love at first sight.

Lucius' jaw went slack the moment his eyes — still covered with a thin film of tears — focused on Bitsy for the first time. He seemed stunned as the traditional words he must have heard time and time again on this sad occasion, fell from Sara’s assistant’s mouth with fluent ease. His incredulous stare followed Bitsy as she politely stepped to the side, making space for other mourners and did not move from her at all. He didn’t even notice Sara herself, not to mention her somewhat clumsy condolences, so intense was his focus.

For her part Bitsy acknowledged the attention she was getting with a polite nod and a small smile which made Sara realize what was happening, and she instantly felt her own lips stretch in somewhat inappropriate amusement. Luckily Marcus too has noticed his brother’s predicament and reacted to it with amusement of his own, even finding it in himself to share a conspiratorial wink with Sara when it was still impossible to get any of Lucius’ attention five minutes later.

***

Not even a fortnight passed since this surprisingly pleasant incident when Sara received a note informing her of Catherine Moore’s passing.

The funeral itself made for a small affair, but the mourning events afterwards tended toward lavish extravagance. Mrs. Moore has been well-liked in society, and especially among other widows who seemed, in her absence, to close ranks behind the cause of finding her grandson an appropriate match. After searching in herself long and hard, Sara could honestly admit she did not mind at all as the situation between her and John could at best be described as tense.

His attractiveness was undeniable and so was his attraction to her, but for all of his contrarian tendencies — holding a steady job, getting himself mixed-up in criminal investigations, waiting at Laszlo Kreizler’s every beck and call — John Schuyler Moore was a scion of old name and had certain expectations to meet. Expectations Sara herself was not interested in meeting.

Married life held no appeal. Motherhood still less so. It was, she would admit after the good doctor Kreizler mentioned it once too many times in his customary smug, mock-professional fashion, in part because of deep-seated resentment for her own mother and the fear she would be as unable to love as that woman had been. No child deserved to feel unwanted. For the most part, however, living in the world of men has made her realize that as an unmarried woman of means she enjoyed rare freedom to dictate her own faith and felt it was her duty to enjoy it to the fullest.

In the sanctity of her mind — where maybe only Laszlo was listening — Sara also felt John Moore was not worth the risk. He made for an engaging companion, courageous defender, loyal friend, but she feared all these qualities would make him a loathsome husband. She wouldn’t be able to withstand the focused attention John paid to Laszlo and one could only imagine the intensity of focus the man’s wife would have to accept. For there was no doubt in Sara’s mind that John Moore would make for a good, attentive husband. Just maybe not to her.

***

Over the course of the next two dinners Laszlo invited her, John and the Isaacsons to — seemingly for the sole purpose of commemorating the horrid events of the past spring — John taken to bemoaning the dullness of high society courtship. In itself it was entertaining to hear the proceedings as described in a man’s voice but much more so if Laszlo happened to be in his cups and in one of fey moods Sara noticed him falling in and out of as time went on. His natural bluntness became frankly unbecoming for company if that happened, and if his tongue happened to get loose, there was no stopping it for love or money.

Seemingly with no intent at all, keeping to all the pretenses of polite conversation, Laszlo had already talked John out of three potentially good matches. One by dredging up unsavory memories of child brothels in relation to the intended being on the younger side. Another because what attraction could be gleaned from John’s description even to her seemed to be aimed solely at the girl's mother, which amused both Laszlo and Marcus endlessly. 

The third candidate he dismissed quite recently by launching into heavily veiled, but still delightfully inappropriate, speculation whether the prospective fiancé's love for small dogs extended to bedroom matters. Which almost — not quite but if it had, it would have been understandable — drove John to leaving the locale in a huff and also prompted another conversation between her and Isaacsons that would, to a casual observer, seem to be almost criminally obscene if not for constant references the brothers made to both ancient text and scientific journals.

They parted much later than they usually would on that evening, talking in high spirits long into the night. Sara has always found these small events to be exceedingly pleasant and would be eager to repeat the experience as soon as possible, but among many freedoms afforded her by her station there was also freedom to have work in the morning.

***

As fate would have it on the very next day — day she showed up for work with her eyes still bleary, certain sallowness to her usually bright complexion and after having argued Constance for the right to leave the house at all — Sara received her very first somewhat serious request for an investigation. At behest of the police, no less! Even if indubitably sent her way by captain Doyle in another attempt to show her up as it concerned a missing pet.

Certainly not the most glamorous of issues, but the woman who entered her agency was brimming with genuine concern. Apparently the police had not been interested in the woman’s plight so much as to hear the full extent of it before they sent her Sara’s way. Luckily — having up to this point been contracted exclusively to count high society widows’ silverware — Sara and all of her employees were more than willing to listen with avid interest.

Mrs. Spoole, Victoria for her friends, was beside herself with worry that her late husband, Frederic, could have made some unwise investments and now some men he might have been involved with were possibly coming back to haunt her into paying off his debts. She was willing to go into quite the detail of these supposed dealings but when Sara asked if anything had actually been demanded of her she said no. Her pets kept disappearing, but not even a calling card — not to mention a threatening letter — has been left in their place.

In the end Sara managed to establish that over the span of six months, since her dear husband's unfortunate demise in fact, the Spoole household lost two dogs and three cats. Victoria was quick to assure her — likely because the questioning made her realize how childish her inquiry came across — that she knew the realities of life, but the recurring nature of the disappearances worried her immensely. She had three little children at the house, the youngest of which was only four years old. Discovering what had become of her animals would go a long way towards putting her mind to rest.

Not precisely the kind of work Sara had in mind when she warned away potential employees who judged their own hearts to be too weak for violence and subterfuge, but her girls were already grumbling among themselves at the inanity of her first few commissions — that, again, boiled down to cataloging tableware. If nothing else, discreet inquiry into a proper neighborhood — no matter how frivolous the underlying issue — would let them all spread their wings a little. Sara herself decided she would stay in, waiting for reports, to let her employees choose what aspects of investigation suited them best to try on.

***

Ida, who tasked herself with canvassing the area, was the first to notice something amiss. Late mister Spoole has been a successful produce vendor killed by no fault of his own in a hansom cab disaster that sadly claimed the lives of five other people. His acquaintances and business partners all painted a picture of him as a thoroughly decent, honest man laboring to the betterment of his family. Certainly not a lowlife who would fall into the trap of illegal gambling debts, as his wife has feared — her report concluded.

Instead, she discovered the missing pet issue was not limited to Spoole household, or even just pets. Over the span of six months in total, nearly forty animals were noted to disappear without a trace. Cats, dogs, yes, but also rabbits and chickens. The number of animals missing kept rising too, at first curiously but very quickly into the territory of unease. By the time Ida finished her interviews Sara had begun to seriously suspect there might be some sort of criminal undertaking among the butchers supplying meat to the area.

However, it was Bitsy who broke the case open entirely. She was observing the Spoole’s house from afar, looking out for any suspicious activity and has indeed noted some. The way she related the incident to Sara later, Bitsy has almost ignored the sight of the boy picking up a cat on the street. Would have dismissed it as child’s play if not for the needling feeling that kept telling her to investigate further.

She followed the boy to the Spoole's property, watched him slip into the garden with the cat in tow, easily tracked him to the nook where the kitchen waste pile was being kept out of sight and then witnessed as the boy gathered the kitty close, broke its neck with one sharp, sudden movement and proceeded to rip it apart with his fingers, starting at the mouth.

Bitsy managed to retain remarkable calm while she presented her findings first to Sara herself and then once again to Mrs Spoole. With the blessing of the latter the waste pile was kicked apart unearthing several dozens of small skeletal remains, some still recognizable carcasses and a few of the freshest kills still wearing collars or ribbons that had only begun to dissolve in the soil.

The situation would be concerning no matter the perpetrator — especially if all the killings proceeded as proficiently and dispassionately as Bitsy described the last one — but the real issue laid with the fact that the proficient killer’s name was Robbie, he was Mrs Spoole middle child and all of seven years of age.

The boy came across as very calm, too. Very collected and very polite. He explained to his hysterical mother he only ever killed the “tinies” — as he referred to the animals — to feel how warm they were on the inside. Said he never felt as calm and happy as when their blood trickled down his wrists.

Clearly the child was disturbed in the extreme and the situation required involvement of an alienist if any ever did.

***

From the outside John’s somewhat servile attitude towards Laszlo seemed more than a little off-putting, but having developed her own relationship with the man Sara could better understand the why of it. There was a certain shiver, a deep thrill that accompanied all Laszlo’s messages. Receiving them could mean another crazy adventure, could be an invitation to experience rarely seen or thought about side of the city if not of human nature itself. They shared an interest in crime, she and Laszlo, but where she saw a puzzle to be solved he perceived an ailment to be diagnosed.

Granted, he was not at all interested in the kind of petty crime Sara knew constituted the bulk of New York City’s criminal activity but the kind he was interested in, and likely to suddenly message about with no regard to the time of day or prior engagements, was the most exciting kind. Little wonder John, who Sara has only recently, listening to him whining over dinner, realized was bored to the bone of drinking, whores and society gossip, would jump at the possibility of assisting the good doctor with anything at all.

She knew there would come a day she would have to call on Laszlo Kreizler professionally in the course of her work, but didn’t expect it to be quite so soon nor in relation to a matter so much closer to his expertise than hers. For besides deranged, bestial killers, Laszlo best enjoyed tinkering with the minds of disturbed children. Not necessarily most moral of pursuits, but getting involved in Beecham killings sufficed to convince her there were things out there much worse than a forced stay in a sanitarium. Especially since, from her own experience, she could recognize the Kreizler’s Institute as, if not a good place than at least, a place where none of the pupils were being gratuitously tortured for the enjoyment of the staff. She didn’t even feel uncomfortable there if ever there emerged a need to visit the institution as it has in relation to the case of young Robbie. 

Sara related the discoveries her employees made as precisely and dispassionately as she was able to, already dreading whether Laszlo would launch into a detailed monologue of how she saw herself in the little killer, but this time all Laszlo only listened to her, asking pertinent, attentive questions when something was unclear to him.

He did pose a diagnosis at the end, but it had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the boy who — in Laszlo’s opinion at least — must have been suffering great strain already, before his father’s passing, for his troubles to manifest in this disturbing manner. He promised to look into the issue and did so, first examining the boy at home and then admitting him to the institute. He never went into detail of what exactly bothered the boy but then again Sara wasn’t particularly eager to find out.

***

Few weeks later, over another exquisite dinner, John brought up the topic of a child kidnapping in the Lying-in hospital that the gazettes were being pressured into keeping off the pages.

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> Animal cruelty is no more explicit than in the show and I'd say much less so.  
> Characters whose deaths are mentioned are Mrs. Isaacson, Mrs. Moore and a minor oc.
> 
> I had fun writing this ;D  
> At some point the pile was supposed to be filled with over 70 skeletons but I saw reason at the very last moment.
> 
> Hope your gift this year is well-received and you're happy with your work!


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